Routines

Routines

There has been a lot of chat amongst local doulas recently about routines.  The general consensus is that there are as many routines as there are babies and mothers.  Some of these routines are written in books (like Gina Ford’s Contended Little Babies, or Tracy Hogg’s The Baby Whisperer) and for some of us, the fact that there seems to be a paperback clearly illustrating the path to take, a prescribed route we can study, motherhood seems less frightening.  You have never done this before, when expecting your first baby, and it must seem like a good idea to find the Ultimate Map to Motherhood.  If only such a thing existed.  And if it were to exist, that your baby had read it too.

I am always happy, as a post natal doula, to support a woman in whatever choices she makes.  My job, after all, is to help her gain confidence and feel happy and content herself as a new mother.  Having someone judge you in those tender early days is recipe for disaster and possibly worse than having no help at all.    A new mother may show me a book, explain a theory and tell me that is what she is doing; I will naturally help to support her achieve whatever the desired end result she hopes for without a word.  I have to say though, from my years of experience, if I have only learnt one thing it is that babies are babies and they tend to find their own way no matter what routine you try to follow.

One very senior and well experienced doula, Stacia Smales-Hill, wrote in our latest newsletter that she had recently met up with three women who had all had babies within a few days of each other and now that the babies were a month old, they had all met up for coffee.  “The subject of routines inevitably came up,” she writes, “The first a devotee of Gina Ford, extolled the virtues of her chosen path.  She had used it with her first baby with excellent results and now was using it for this baby.  The second woman was not sure which approach to take and was reading everything, trying to pick out the good bits from each and was attempting to learn in a reasoned way.  The third hadn’t read anything, didn’t have a clue and was doing what her baby wanted.  All three babies were on the exact same schedule of sleeping and eating.”  Stacia says by way of a ps, “it couldn’t be more perfect if I made it up…”

I have a client at the moment, a very sensible GP, who has just had number two.  This week, I arrived to find her, in her pjs looking quite stunned, the six week old baby in her arms.  “I’m so excited!” She said to me, “She slept through the night!”  She held the baby aloft as if offering her up to the Gods as a thank you for the first good nights sleep she had had in nearly two months.  “Well done you!” I said to her, laughing and clapping.  “Yes,” she said, “well done me…”  We both looked at the baby smiling, a thoughtful silence filled the air.  She cleared her throat.  “It was nothing to do with me, was it?”  “Nothing at all.”  I said, shaking my head.  

Babies do what they do.  You can try to mould them into a routine if it makes you feel better and perhaps they have the personality which will fit that routine and perhaps occasionally quite by mistake it will suit them, and they will fall into the schedule you are trying to overlay on to their natural behaviour, but generally speaking, the baby would have done what it is doing naturally, anyway.  Worse case scenario, the baby will do exactly what it would have done which didn’t fit in with your routine and you, the parents, would feel like total failures.  You should be bonding with your baby in those early days, surviving from day to day on very little sleep and trusting your own instincts as a new parent and not beating yourself up because your baby has not settled into an identifiable routine.  But that thesis doesn’t make a good book.  Perhaps it makes good doula and parent, though.